Hoard Your Pills

I’ve learned over the years that there are two types of physical therapists – those who gently stretch you back into shape over the course of many sessions and those who break adhesions in a brutal few.

The first time I needed PT – for a frozen shoulder – I was cranked on by the latter.

The hub drove me to urgent care to make sure I hadn’t broken anything.

I braced myself for every excruciating bump in the road, every right turn and left turn, every acceleration.

The physician assistant questioned me: “On a scale of one to ten, where ten is the worst pain you can imagine, where would you rank your pain.”

“I took 4 Advil before I came, so I’d put it at a 9 now, but before the Advil it was a twelve.” Because it was worse than I ever imagined pain could be.

While we waited for a radiologist to read the x-rays, I sighed to the hub, “They’re probably not going to want to prescribe anything due to the opioid crackdown.” But even as I said it, I expected they would. Given the amount of pain I was in.

The hub got up and read a poster on the exam room wall. It was all about their new controlled-substance prescribing policy and how they would check a registry to see how often they had been prescribed for a patient.

The nurse came in and gave me a shot of toradol.

The PA came back in: “I’m going to send you home with 2 prescriptions, one for Motrin 800 and one for Tylenol 650. You can alternate taking them.”

My face surely said, “Really? Motrin 800? When I just told you that 4 Advil only brought the pain down to a 9?”

I think she heard my face because she said, annoyingly cheerfully, “Just imagine how much pain the people who break their ribs are in.”

“You’re an idiot,” I thought, but not loud enough for her to hear me.

When she left the room I turned to the hub, “I’ve broken bones and I’ve bruised bones and I know from experience that bruised bones hurt more.”

“AND they take longer to heal.”

I should have told her what my PT said about me not having an addictive personality.

I should have told her to check my record and see that I refused Norco last time I was there.

I should have told her about all the unused Vicodin and oxycontin and hydrocodone I’ve turned in at various community toxic waste disposal events over the years.

I wished I hadn’t turned them in.

But instead of saying anything I just mustered a smile and left with the two lame scripts.

The Tylenol 650 is worthless – didn’t even come close to touching the pain.

“Tylenol never does,” my daughter said.

After four days of taking Motrin 800 around the clock my feet and ankles swelled.

They haven’t swelled since I was pregnant 28 years ago.

I called the urgent care clinic, “My feet and ankles are swollen and they never swell, should I quit taking the Motrin?”

“I don’t think so,” the voice on the other end said.

“Are you a medical person?”

“I’m a medical assistant.”

“Well I googled it and learned that some medications – NSAIDS among them – can cause swelling.”

She didn’t know that.

“You guys prescribe drugs without knowing the possible side effects?”

This is why I hate the medical profession the way some people hate lawyers.

So I quit taking the Motrin and I’m toughing it out with tart cherry juice.

Because I remember Dr. Oz saying something about it a long time ago.

And I’m wondering why the pendulum has to always swing to the extremes.

Why not start addressing the opioid epidemic by actually checking the database and refusing opioids to those who have been flagged?

Why not prescribe 2 or 3 days worth of a narcotic to a newly injured patient just to get her through the worst of it and then switch her to Motrin?

I suppose I should have insisted on stronger pain meds but insisting would have likely put a red flag in my file.

“Oh yeah, she was here looking for drugs,” I can imagine her saying to a head-shaking staff when I left.

It’s been a painful, miserable week.

When my mom fractured her spine last Spring, her doc prescribed 100 hydrocodone.

“Why did he prescribe me 100?,” she asked when I came to spend the night, “I don’t need 100!”

So sorry you were–are?–in so much pain. I don’t need to take my pain meds right now, so they’re sitting in my drawer. I have a friend who was refused the same medication because she ran out one day too soon, and her pain was very bad. She went to a new doctor and is doing just fine now. Sometimes I think we’ve lost our minds.

Thanks Linda. We have definitely lost our minds, in so many ways. Glad you don’t currently need your pills (don’t throw them away). My pain is easing up – sleeping is still hard but I’m doing pretty well now during the day.

A few days after I fell, when all I could do was sit completely still, I binge-watched the first 5 episodes of The Resident, where I learned that medical error is the third leading cause of death. Even though the show is fiction, turns out the stat is true, according to this John Hopkins article.

The show sheds light on medicine’s corrupt underbelly and if its fiction is based on reality, then greed – the source of all evil – is reaching its bony fingers deeper and deeper into medicine.

Remember when it wasn’t all about money? Remember when we valued making a contribution to society for the sake of making a contribution? Remember when young future scientists dreamed of curing cancer for the sake of helping their fellow man? Now it’s all big pharmaceutical business. Lord have mercy.

Yes! I used to dream of being one of those scientists, but I took a different path. In many ways, I’m glad the Lord led me the way He did. It’s hard to say whether I would’ve unknowingly been part of the problem rather than recognizing the need for a solution.